The END DAY: Fushigi Yuugi OVA II

Today is October 1, a date of great significance in human history. No, I’m not talking about the Battle of Gaugamela, the beginning of Shinkansen service from Tokyo to Osaka, or even the Thrilla in Manila. I’m talking about the fateful day when savage war engulfed the world and civilization was destroyed: 1997, October 1, The END DAY.

Now, to commemorate the the thirteenth anniversary of The END DAY, I’m launching an annual series in which I’ll be discussing END DAYs of my own. This kickoff post will cover my first END DAY as an anime fan: the day I dropped the second Fushigi Yuugi OVA.

Fushigi Yuugi was one of the first 20 anime series I ever watched, and it was one of the first 10 I watched outside the magical box called Cartoon Network. Since my enjoyment of anime hadn’t yet fallen prey to the hedonic treadmill, Fushigi Yuugi blew me away. Sure, it was full of girly-looking guys who had as many feelings as they had strands of hair in their eyes, but the show had more than enough plot and action to make up for it. At 52 episodes, it was the second longest series with a continuous plot I’d seen at the time, DBZ being first. I was hooked from start to finish, and when I found out there were OVAs, I scrounged through the bowels of IRC for weeks to get them.

The first OVA sucked. I was more confused than angry. I’d never seen anime suck. What the hell was going on? I did a little research and found out that the OVA was created to bridge the gap between the ending of the anime and timeline of the the manga, or something like that. What a great excuse. It only sucked because it had to. I totally bought it. It made a lot more sense than anime sucking of its own accord, that’s for sure. Now that the first OVA bridged the gap between the anime and the manga, the second OVA wouldn’t have to suck. Those surviving vowed not repeat their mistakes of the past and erected a great tower in the sky to oppress evil forever. What could possibly go wrong?

The second OVA has six episodes. I bailed after the fourth. It was horrendous. They came up with some new piss-poor excuse to extend the plot and do all kinds of worthless stupid bullshit with shitty new enemies and soporific character development. It was everything I’ve now come to hate about filler intensified by the fact that I actually expected it to be good. As much as I’d love to go into detail, I honestly don’t remember that much. I wanted to rewatch the OVA before writing this post, but my last post was so popular that I spent all my free time responding to comments instead of reliving the horror of The END DAY. My life clearly sucks. Time’s running out, so I’ll just leave you with this: I would rather rewatch Tenchi in Tokyo than rewatch the second Fushigi Yuugi OVA.

Reading Sucks was popular ? I thought you didn’t like to respond comments anyway… Sorry i missed that, that’s because i was threatened enough playing Crystalis, let alone to read a post which in its title, implies reading it would suck.

I spent a lot of extra time responding to my Reading Sucks comments because it’s one of my non-sellout posts. I want it to be influential. I want English teachers to stumble upon it and rethink how they’re teaching. I want frustrated English students to stumble upon it and realize they’re not alone. Long story short, I’m making the world a better place. Then they’re going to see the backlink to this post, and they’ll want to play Crystalis.

Holy shit, you’d rather watch friggin Tenchi in Tokyo? That thing was atrocious. The only things decent about it were the OP and ED, and ED only because simply the notion of Japanese banjo music was so absurd.

My experience with Fushigi Yuugi at all were minimal. I kind of preferred the batshit-ness that was Ayashi no Ceres.

I preferred Ceres as well, enough to watch it subbed and dubbed, then make my brother watch it, and then make my roommate watch it. Funny how two of my first 20 anime series were Yuu Watase works.

Tenchi in Tokyo sucked big time. Notice this is the first time I used that tag. Then the Fushigi Yuugi OVA replaced it as the worst anime ever. I have no idea what came after that, but right now the award for worst anime ever goes to: Naruto: Dai Katsugeki!! Yuki Hime Shinobu Houjou Dattebayo! Special: Konoha Annual Sports Festival.

The series sold out. Plain and simple. The story ended perfectly fine with the TV series, but they wanted to make more money, so they kept thinking of shitty new reasons to go back into the book. I just read the summary of the first episode of the third OVA.

It has been three years since Miaka’s journey into the “Universe of the Four Gods.” She and Taka (Tamahome’s reincarnation) are married, and Taka coaches a girls basketball team. One of the team members, Mayo Sakaki, has a crush on him and is depressed to find out he is married. After hearing that Miaka is three months pregnant, Mayo opens the “Universe of the Four Gods” and is sucked into it. When Mayo goes into the book, Miaka faints. At the hospital, the couple learns that their baby has vanished from Miaka’s womb and she is no longer pregnant. Taka goes into the book to rescue Mayo. In the book world, ten years have passed and the world is deteriorating. He quickly finds Chichiri and Tasuki, but the three are pulled into a battle with an evil being disguised as Genbu. They are able to defeat it, though Taka gets hurt in the process. Taiitsukun arrives and explains that they must find the remaining Suzaku Seven, who have all been reborn.

I’m due for a rewatch of Fushigi Yuugi sometime within the next five years. I’d rewatch Tenchi in Tokyo for the nostalgia factor and not much else. I remember it being pretty bad even for one of my first 10 anime.

Lucky you. The more I remember, the worse I feel as a human being for having wasted my time watching them instead of cleaning up litter in the local park. They just find stupid new reasons to go back in the book, fight stupid new enemies, and share stupid feelings.

OMG!!Your post found the perfect time!!
I just finished seeing Clannad and Clannad After Story.I told my friend about it and she said all those are nothing compared to Curious Play (Fushigi Yuugi)
Now that really ticked me off..I’m gonna give her your link and make her eat her words 😛
Well I havent seen the original TV story either,but still I believe Clannad surpasses every anime out there!
And LOL @
The TV series was good. Just don’t watch the OVAs. In fact, the OVAs don’t exist.

I’m watching Tenchi in Tokyo right now. Let me tell you, it sucks a LOT, and I’m very bias to anything with Ryoko in it. If there weren’t 52 episodes, I would watch this show just to compare it to Tenchi in Tokyo, which I will probably never finish because I can’t find it in a format that has the audio and video matched up correctly. Do you know how annoying it is when the audio and video aren’t matched up? I’ve actually watched entire episodes of some shows like that. Now imagine watching an episode of Tenchi in Tokyo like that….HELL.

Crystalis was a rebel. Instead of setting doomsday in the vague year of 20xx it decided to preempt both Y2K and 2112 with it’s own better-than-yours disaster in the immediate future. Crystalis totally fulfilled it’s part to keep fear alive. I’d love to attend the rally but the state decided to schedule our 8 hour engineering exam about 50 miles away on the 30th so I’m going to have to miss out.

Tenchi in Tokyo has two things going for it: nostalgia and a brand name. If I hadn’t watched it when I was first getting into anime, I wouldn’t care about it. If it were some standalone series with no previous franchise installments backing it up, I wouldn’t care about it.

With all that said, I could still watch certain episodes of TiT and actually enjoy them. Can’t say the same for the FY OVAs.

You watched the entire Fushigi Yuugi TV series? Without throwing something at the screen everytime Miaka and/ or Tamahome kept trying to ‘protect’ (i.e. mindfuck) each other by running away from or pretending to betray the other? I am profoundly impressed. (I ragequit somewhere in the middle/ two thirds of the way in. Never going near it again. Evar.)

Then again, you completed a gay ninja show and read Opal Mehta. I am not so much impressed, as worried about the extent of your masochistic tendencies.

I feel exactly as you do. Fushigi Yuugi was one of the first shows I saw too way back when. I loved a LOT. But then came the OVAs which I could never get past the first two… they were too horrible. I had the DVDs sitting in front of me for a year didn’t watch it (it was from a friend).

I went through hell to find those OVAs. I’m amazed I didn’t force myself to sit through them to justify my efforts. This was before streaming sites, bittorrent, well, you’re old, I’m sure you know all too well.

i’m a hard fan of Fushigi Yuugi (i think i have no life.. because it’s already 2011 and i still love it)
like other people feel, i kinda hate Miaka too.. sorry but she’s just too lucky and too naive (plus, she screams every time)

the first OVA pissed me off too, though
i mean.. first, Tamahome met Hotohori’great-grand-son
then, he met a girl who says that he’s (my lovely handsome villain) Nakago
OH! that girl was Tomo….. waitwhat?!?

when i was watching the second OVA, i thought “the story is fine.. i can deal with it”
but then i remembered about the first OVA… omg i’m so confused

but jsyk, the author herself (Watase Yuu) didn’t get too involved in the making of the anime

if you like the Fushigi Yuugi anime series, you should read the manga (from vol. 1-18)
it’s the ‘real source’ anyways
the story is quite ‘clearer’ than the anime’s OVA